Blunder Years

Oftentimes, when I lay on my bed, thinking about life, I reflect on my memories. Sometimes, I can peacefully reminisce on how I wanted to be an astronaut. Other times, I’m able to sift through my memories and feel nostalgic about my childhood. Then, there’s those times when I ride my train of thought in the wrong direction and end up going through my blunder years. Embarrassing, cringe parts of my childhood that make me shrivel up inside from sheer humiliation. I’ve had a lot of embarrassing moments in my past, and my only solace is the fact that everyone has them too.

One of the earliest things I remember I liked was winning. Every child’s competitive, whether they’re competing in simple tag, or trying to finish something quickly. I don’t think there’s a single person in the world who wouldn’t appreciate winning. I, however, placed way too much importance on winning, and being the first to do something. It’s not my enjoyment of winning that I find embarrassing; it’s the fact that I care way too much about it. For example, when my brother and I would play various games, I’d play very calmly, but once I lost, I flew into a rampage, often knocking boards over and eventually chasing my brother into his room, where he locked himself to avoid my crying, seething self. I think my family even catered to me, often letting me win things so that they wouldn’t have to deal with me, but of course I didn’t know that; I was more concerned with the pleasure of winning.

This also manifested in school. I’d always be the one trying to finish first, or to raise my hand first to answer a question. I guess that behavior isn’t terrible, but I’d often make a big show out of it, like swaggering up to the teacher and handing them my work, or simply telling people that I, yes, I finished first. I can only imagine what my classmates thought when they saw me handing my work in ostentatiously - “Do you think you’re cool”?

I guess I liked broadcasting my achievements to everybody because it made me feel better about myself. Maybe I worried too much about my insecurities. I mean, what fourth grader would watch childish cartoons meant for toddlers? Not a winner, of course.

At least that’s what I thought.

As I grew up (not really), I never really seemed to outgrow my attitude. The worst part is that my tendency to like embarrassing things caught on as well. I watched Kung Fu Panda so many times as a child I memorized the entire script. I used to have hair short as a monk (“hey, being bald seems fun”), and hair puffier than a mushroom (”this makes me look like a fun-guy”). Probably one of the most embarrassing things I’ve done was in sixth grade, when I called myself fat.

It wasn’t self-deprecating or anything. It was a joke that implied I was fat, and I wasn’t even super skinny, so the joke wasn’t sarcastic. I just called myself fat. My friends would play along too, making jokes like: “How many Twinkies did you eat today?” It was the most bizarre thing, and I have no clue why I kept up this fat character for most of the sixth grade. It wasn’t very embarrassing then, with my friends joking about it, but now as I reflect on sixth grade, I can’t imagine how ridiculous I must’ve looked.

It’s interesting how I basically never learned from my past experiences. It seems that my main reason for most of the things I liked to do was attention. I wanted to win and brag, probably because I wanted attention. I called myself fat, likely for attention. I’ll probably never completely understand my childhood self, and even in 20 years, I might look back to present day and wonder: “Where did I go wrong?”